Map Worlds plots a journey of discovery through the world of
women map-makers from the golden age of cartography in the sixteenth-century
Low Countries to tactile maps in contemporary Brazil. Author Will
C. van den Hoonaard examines the history of women in the profession,
sets out the situation of women in technical fields and cartography-related
organizations, and outlines the challenges they face in their careers.
Map Worlds explores women as colourists in early times, describes
the major houses of cartographic production, and delves into the economic
function of intermarriages among cartographic houses and families.
It relates how in later centuries, working from the margins, women
produced maps to record painful tribal memories or sought to remedy
social injustices. Much later, one woman so changed the way we think
about continents that the shift has been likened to the Copernican
revolution. Other women created order and wonder about the lunar landscape,
and still others turned the art and science of making maps inside
out, exposing the hidden, unconscious, and subliminal “text”
of maps. Shared by all these map-makers are themes of social justice
and making maps work for the betterment of humanity.

Will C. van den Hoonaard is a professor emeritus of sociology
at the University of New Brunswick and the author or editor of eight
books. Most recently, he authored a series on ethics in research,
including the acclaimed The Seduction of Ethics. His current
interests cover qualitative research, research ethics, Bahá’is,
human rights, and the world of map-makers. He is a Woodrow Wilson
Fellow.

Reviews

“This book offers a ‘rehabilitative history’ and is
an important contribution to the field of gender studies....
Well-researched and written, and recommended for academic library
collections.”

— Susan McKee, University of Calgary, Western Association of Map Libraries Information Bulletin

“An inspiring book that is fascinating and highly-researched.”

— Jennifer Carter, University of the Sunshine Coast, The Globe: Journal of The Australian and New Zealand Map Society Inc.

“The vignettes draw together perhaps the only source for personal biographies of female pioneers in heavily male-dominated professions.”

— Julie Sweetkind-Singer, The Portolan

“Map Worlds provides a social and cultural analysis of
the intersections between gender and cartographic practice. By
focussing on maps themselves, Map Worlds fits within the
new materialist turn within the social sciences, rejecting
binaries between matter and discourse and attributing agency to
things. There is also a focus on the epistemic uniqueness of
women-made maps which is a real point of interest for readers
(like myself) broadly concerned with gender and technology. The
major strength of the book is built on interviews with 25 women
occupied in cartography.... Attention to the structural and
normative environment of cartography is a proper area of focus
for a sociologist but one that has until now remained
understudied.... The author is particularly interested in how
the contours of this map world have circumscribed the lives
of female cartographers.... Map Worlds seeks some
redress for the exclusion and exploitation of female
cartographers, both by providing detailed visibilty on the
role of women in the production of cartographic knowledge
from the 13th C on (29–168) and by telling the in-depth
stories of particular women map-makers (169–204)....
Van den Hoonaard makes the claim that theoretical shifts
within cartography away from realist approaches has made some
wiggle room for the simultaneous recognition of women
cartographers because women make maps differently, more
subjectively. This is a tricky argument to make without
sliding toward essentialism. There is of course a wealth of
good research demonstrating that female scientists set
different sorts of research questions and may even bring a
unique epistemological perspective on the same sets of
questions or data (eg. Fox-Keller 1985). Map Worlds
engages with such empirical research—specifically that
coming out of feminist geography and cartography
(269–284)—which helps to provide nuance to the
claim about gendered cartographic practice.”